


A whole lot of too much history for there not to be

by Aeshna etonensis (GMWWemyss)



Series: Modest Proposals [6]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Peak District, WI markets, farming, rural life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 19:36:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6579625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GMWWemyss/pseuds/Aeshna%20etonensis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn really ought to have seen this coming. After all, it had been cheese which had brought them together. For (wait for it) starters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A whole lot of too much history for there not to be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Niler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niler/gifts), [Bubba (absynthedrinker)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/absynthedrinker/gifts), [elmyraemilie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elmyraemilie/gifts), [freakybb2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/freakybb2/gifts), [Fenniferj](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenniferj/gifts), [HealerLady](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HealerLady/gifts).



> Set, obviously, in a happy future at Bent Clough.

* * *

Zayn had always known, somehow, it’d come to this.

Oh, not the when and how, or in detail; but … he’d known. Somehow.

The signs had been there. The omens had been observable.

And from the off, at that.

There’d been the time – very early on, when no one outside a very charmed circle was to have known anything of … _All This_ … – when (in the time they now looked back upon as the Era of Fronting and Stunting) he’d slipped away to come back, here, to the home he was not meant to be known to have, to surprise the man he was thought to have left behind and with whom he was very much not supposed to share a house and a home and a life, any more than he was, officially, sharing a band with him ( _‘for the moment, for just now, for the time being’_ ); and found Liam not merely _there,_ but entertaining a lady.

To tea.

A very nice, grandmotherly lady she’d been, too. And a Lady, full stop. In fact, the old countess (in her own right, mind you) of Mar, who combined one of the older Scots peerage titles with long, adamantly rural and agricultural, residence in the Malvern Hills, in Wildest Worcs.

He’d started to sense even then that this day should come.

The subtle influences had crept in ever more strongly there at Bent Clough. When they’d brought Joe home: Yusuf Geoffrey Walter, and anyone expecting they’d name their child as ‘Taylor’ could whistle for it: and Liam had shown just how wrong they’d been, bantering of old; and how very far from attaining to his full capacity to be A Father, with audible initial caps, he’d been in the ‘Daddy Direction’ days. _That_ had been a good quarter, reckoned Zayn, for Royal Doulton, or at least whatever division of that firm it was which sold Bunnykins. And well before Joe was taking solid food, Liam had done several FE courses and what almost amounted to an apprenticeship – that so-called hiatus, wink-wink-nudge-nudge-say-n’-more, had been good for _something_ – and had joined the BBKA. Because Liam was damned if, when his son was old enough to have honey with his rusks or toast or porridge, that honey was going to be _bought,_ even from a neighbour at the parish fête or District bazaar or WI market.

Zayn really ought to have seen this in full even then.

He’d seen it in outline, all the same, and readily.

Two years after, they’d brought home a sister for Joe, Mariam Patricia Malala in full and ‘Molly’ to all, always. And by then, they’d already acquired a dog. And kept the bees. And free-range poultry (Old English Pheasant Fowl, and, ‘Zed, it’s fresh eggs for the sprogs, and the cockerels are meaty, and chicken’s _halal_ for you’). It hadn’t surprised Zayn for a moment that his Baba, and Geoff, and Liam, between them, had not waited a week, and Molly yet the merest infant, to get stuck in to building a Wendy house. Geoff and Yaser had been helpful, but it had been Liam who’d taken charge of that project and done the bulk of the work, a man of parts and good with his hands ( _so_ very good...), and Liam whom it reflected when finished (which was at least a fortnight after it might have been, and Zayn felt no shame at all in being at fault for those delays, even beyond the inevitable delays of cooing over Molly and cosseting Joe and calling everyone in to marvel at Molly’s every developmental milestone: the delays Zayn had caused all on his own were, he maintained, the inevitable consequence of seeing Liam being all handy and manly and craftsmanlike...).

When the Wendy house, all in stone and slate, had turned out to look precisely like a miniature version of any solid White Peak, Moorlands, farmhouse ( _with_ operating mod cons), Zayn had not bothered to pretend surprise. That it had had (and yet had) its own wee kitchen garden and its own flower garden did not, then or after, move him to pantomime shock: he really couldn’t be arsed. That it came, from the off, with its own, scaled-down farm buildings … well, that had been warning enough.

No, Zayn had always had a strong suspicion of where, in a general way, all this was heading. When Molly’s favourite soft toy had been a lamb, he’d foreseen, and simply accepted, that there were Derbyshire Gritstone sheep in his future (and increasingly frequent visits from Niall, invariably wearing a Derby County FC strip, intent on teaching the children to sing ‘The Derby Ram’ and _support_ sodding Rams in the teeth of Liam’s devotions and Zayn’s own). When Joe had become mildly obsessed with ducks, owing to stories and picture books at Reception, Zayn had resigned himself to adding Shetland ducks to the tale of their poultry.

It was a damned good thing they’d their own studio at Bent Clough. Even if that meant that Haz-and-Louis, and Niall, tended to move in upon them and declined to be shifted afterward, weeks after the work was done and dusted. Even though it meant that Ed was always popping by, ostensibly to collaborate or ask Liam to produce something, and in fact to play with the children (they were the same mental age, reflected Zayn) and hang about the Aga putting the dogs to shame when it came to begging food. (Although he wasn’t, in that regard, a patch upon Nialler – or Danny and Ant.)

Zayn had realised that this fate was drawing near after Karen Safaa Ruth had joined the family, Joe and Molly being by then quite old enough to help, dotingly, with a baby sister. Liam had by then added a few fields, by canny purchase, to Bent Clough Farm; and had got new certs. after having looked out the history of the land; and (shades of honey and eggs) had been all Sensible and Businesslike (pull the other one, _it_ has a ring of eight on it) in explaining the superiority, the necessity (‘for the children’s sake, Zed’), of their Own Milk and Butter, and, ‘This used to be dairy as well as sheep, love, back when the Chaddocks and then the Rooses was farming it for His Grace’ … and Zayn had simply smiled, and kissed him, and accepted that his fate, his _taqdir,_ was now to include Shorthorns.

Zayn had not expected in detail that the Shorthorns should not be the end of it. He had not realised that the Decree laid out before him by the All-Beneficent could include yet more. But it had done. Liam and the neighbours were thick as thieves (the Tomlinson-Styleses approved: was this not Labour-Co-op mutual aid at its best? And if Geoff and, Zayn sometimes suspected, his Baba, and, he more than suspected, Liam, regarded it as sound Tory enterprise and entrepreneurship and Thatcherite bootstrapping and self-help, they did so quietly, at least, without making a meal of it) … Liam and the neighbours were thick as thieves, and there were, in short order, Bagot goats, jointly owned, keeping everyone’s scrub and heath in check by grazing, and the hives were moved about from garden to garden, arable to arable, and some of the neighbours had British Milk flocks and some, British Guernseys, and one nice old trout famously maintained a large flock of Clun Forests, and everyone had some dairy cattle, nearby and just over into Derbyshire as well.

Zayn had wondered if his fate truly were upon him, years before, when he’d found Liam – back before the Referendum, which nowadays seemed to have been a great deal of fuss for something so obvious – doggedly reading up on PDOs.

Zayn had _known_ his fate was upon him when he’d come back from a promo gig, eager to fall into Liam (children permitting), only to find that Alex James was stopping, and that the collaboration between Liam and Blur’s former bassist was wholly unmusical, and had nowt to do with the Bent Clough studio.

Because, apparently, this is what part-retired popstars _did_ with themselves, when they’d settled down and started a family; as apparently it had been what Scots countesses and heads of clans did, farming in Worcestershire.

Zayn suppressed a smile. The monthly Fine Food Market, one Saturday a month in Leek, had the merit that one or another of the children could commonly get an exeat to come and aid him: which they couldn’t of course do on Wednesday Charter Market days and ‘Totally Locally’ Sundays. And Wee Karen could charm and work a crowd to the point at which … well, Zayn _knew_ damned well she was _theirs,_ but there were moments in which he half-wondered if she were Hazza’s, somehow. Although the spaniel eyes which closed many a bargain _were_ all Liam’s....

The Bent Clough Farm Shop stall was set out, and all their many awards for making artisanal cheese displayed. Karen was already charming OAPs into trying cheeses they’d never have imagined trying, from Bent Clough Blue Dovedale to White Manifold to the new paneer Liam had (bloody _finally_ ) been happy with.

‘Yes, Mrs Hine. That’s 500g of the Manifold with bilberry … £9.90, please.’

Liam slipped past him with a quick kiss on his forehead, to set out a new tranche of cheeses, stonking great rounds and halves and quarters, including proper Stilton from just over in Derbs, owing to his cooperative schemes … but Zayn wasn’t meditating on that, but, rather, on the flex of Liam’s muscles as he worked.

Wee Karen, fortunately, was on the ball. ‘Good morning, Mr Walwyn. Have you tried our new ewe’s cheese version of Staffordshire? And I know Mrs Walwyn likes our new paneer....’

Zayn turned his attention, reluctantly, back to his tasks. Although Wee Karen seemed to be doing fine on her own: buttering up customers and milking it for all it was worth, thought he: sheepishly. And, oh, _no,_ was that Liam sounding enthused as the Team Vicar suggested they consider doing an own-marque chutney?

Zayn really did sigh, quietly. The things he did for love....

Of course, thought he, one of those things was – quietly – considering just what, precisely, he was going to do to Tommo for that quip the week prior: that Zayn had _thought_ Liam and he were Becks and Posh, and had turned out to be more Wallace and Gromit.

Cheesy pop might have brought them together initially; but one Louis Tomlinson-Styles was very near to being reminded to stay on his side of the stile if he didn’t care to be gored, and hard cheese to him if he didn’t.

Zayn smiled, and let his youngest do the selling. Like Zayn, Karen preferred this bit of the job to mucking out, back at the farm, which she left to Liam and (in hols) to her brother. All the same, reflected Zayn, as he tried not to stare _too_ heatedly at Liam as his husband casually hefted crates full of large and heavy cheeses: where there’s muck – _happen tha takes Tyke out o’ Yorkshire; tha’ll never take Yorkshire out o’ t’ Tyke_ – where there’s muck, there’s brass.

And much more importantly, where the children were, there were Liam and Zayn; and where Liam was, he was, and vice versa.

He turned to Miss Lomas with a smile. ‘That’ll be £5.38, Miss Lomas – or gratis, if you’re trading your excellent oatcakes, Karen swears _she_ didn’t bolt the lot,’ said he, subtly nodding to where Liam was weighing up Staffordshire, Sage Derby, and Moorlands Brie for the Team Vicar.

Miss Lomas sniggered, in the refined fashion of the retired primary teacher she was. ‘Incriminating crumbs down his singlet, dear?’

Zayn grinned back. ‘It’s a hardcore, rock and roll life, at Bent Clough.’

‘ _You,_ my dear, shall have oatcakes. _And_ six pounds for the cheese. I’ll take the change out in a selfie: you, dear Liam, Karen, and the cheese.’

‘Done and done,’ said Zayn. With a truly cheesy smile.

He’d surrendered happily to his fate long since, after all. Even unto flogging artisanal cheese. And why not? It had been the cheesiest of pop music which had brought them to where they were; they were simply making a maturer sort of cheese, together, now.

 

* * *

 


End file.
